#BlogTour-‘The Train Man’ by Andrew Mulligan

About the book…

It’s never too late to get back on track.

Michael is a broken man. He’s waiting for the 09.46 to Gloucester, so as to reach Crewe for 11.22: the platforms are long at Crewe, and he can walk easily into the path of a high-speed train to London. He’s planned it all: a net of tangerines (for when the refreshments trolley is cancelled), and a juice carton, full of neat whisky. To make identification swift, he has taped his last credit card to the inside of his shoe.

What Michael hasn’t factored in is a twelve-minute delay, which risks him missing his connection, and making new ones. He longs to silence the voices in his own head: ex-girlfriends, colleagues, and the memories from his schooldays, decades old. They all torment him. What Michael needs is somebody to listen.

A last, lonely journey becomes a lesson in the power of human connection, proving that no matter how bad things seem, it’s never too late to get back on track.

Journeys intersect. People find hope when and where they least expect it. A missed connection needn’t be a disaster: it could just save your life.

My thanks to Chatto&Windus and Anne Cater of  Random Things for the blogtour invite and my gifted hardback copy of ‘Train Man’ by Andrew Mulligan which I absolutely and thoroughly enjoyed reading. I say ‘enjoyed’ but it was hard because a) my eyes were blurry pretty much from the start and b)all the things that had happened to Michael that led him to this point.

It takes consummate skill to craft a novel about a man’s journey to kill himself by train. At the start I found it difficult to read, partly from personal history with this subject and partly because it so accurately reflects what is going through this man’s head. It jumps about through time and space as he looks at a life gone awry, the decisions made for, and about him, and the horrible finality of his last journey. Once the style clicked, it put you inside his thought processes as you sit in horror, turning page after page, reeling from what has happened to him and why this option seemed valid-

”He would wait for the dark.The darkness would be intense on the track,and he would plod on until whatever train it was kissed him goodnight and sliced him into however many pieces ninety-six wheels would cut you into-if it was a twelve-coach train,of course.”

Alternating with Michael’s first person narrative of his journey to Crewe are vignettes from other travellers on the journey and these were just so well written, so well thought out , they brought to life the imaginery conversations and stories that I have concocted at stupid o’clock, waiting on trains to take me to placement over the years. It is almost hyeprreal, the dialogue and intricate passages of thoughts which have a rhythm like a train journey-this may just be me though, I am not sure if it was intentional by the author, or maybe because the novel is set on trains, but it’s very rhythmic.

The most memorable vignette to me was Ayesha, a teenage girl journeying home to return her younger, deceased brother’s guitar. She has been sat next to a vicar and their talk about god, life, and the improbability of the universe being just and fair is so heartrending-

”’We live in a godless world,’she said brightly.’That’s the truth of it,because random accidents happen and…this train could be about to derail.This train could collide with another,or there could be a person in this carriage with a bomb,about to cause maximum suffering as encouraged by some crackpot ideology,which will be based on a god,needless to say.It doesn’t need much explanation, does it?Then it all falls apart because it’s so patently absurd.I mean, if God exists…Christ he must have hated my brother and our family.”’

This is the journey of a lifetime, literally and metaphorically. ‘Train Man’ is a letter to our souls, a chance to reflect, rewind and pause along the way about where we have been, where we are going to and how we are going to get there as well as how many stops and detours will be encountered along the way.

It’s thoroughly recommended, beautifully uplifting and as Andrew Mulligan says on the back cover-

”What was the starting point? I’m afraid it was when a colleague did the unthinkable,and all I could think about was what might have saved him.”

About the author…

Andrew Mulligan was born in 1962 and brought up in London.He worked as a theatre director for ten years before travels in Asia prompted him to retrain as a teacher.

Having taught in Brazil,India, Vietnam and the Phillipines ,he returmed to the UK and now writes full time.

He is best known as a children’s author;his novel,’Trash‘, (2010)has been published in 32 languages.He writes radio plays and film scripts,’Train Man‘ is his first adult novel.

Links-https://www.andymulliganbooks.com/

Twitter @ChattoBooks

@annecater